Nobody warned me that the safest place near a firework is a pub with a committee.
LONDON, England (Seeker News) – I spent the first part of the day lying on the floor, as a protest against the cold, and the second part on the Northern line, as a protest against everything else.
Tonight is Bonfire Night, which in my band is observed as a sort of annual audit: how many fingers do we still have, and who is standing too near the sparklers. Dervla’s Aunt Maud, who lives out in High Barnet, hosts a bonfire every year in a garden the size of a bus shelter, and we have been summoned to bring a bass amp for no reason anyone has explained.
Morning: The Floor
I will not dwell on the morning, except to say that there is a lot of dust under my bed and it is mostly demo tapes. I found one called “Songs For Landlords, Volume Two” and played it on a cassette player that has been dying since the Blair years. It sounded exactly as I remembered, which is to say like a man being cross inside a biscuit tin.
Lying there, I read the morning news round-up on Ian Visits’ London Buzz column, which is a good way of finding out what has happened to the capital while you were asleep. It had twelve items on the first screen and every one of them made me feel slightly older.
Midday: The Pub Problem in High Barnet
The item that grabbed me was from the Barnet Society, which reported that High Barnet is to have two community-inspired pubs within 300 yards of each other, each run by local residents. Two pubs. Both run by neighbours. Three hundred yards apart.
I read the headline to the train carriage and an older man opposite said, “That’s a rivalry waiting to happen.” He is right. Give any two groups of residents a pub each and a short stretch of pavement and you have the plot of every punk band that ever split in a van.
I should say that I love the idea. A pub run by the people who drink in it is the nearest thing this city has to a squat with a licence. There will be a committee, and a rota, and an argument about the quiz. It will be the most democratic thing in north London for about eighteen months, and then someone will propose a vote on the crisps.
Afternoon: The Eagle Question
On the platform at High Barnet I met a stranger who wanted to talk about football, which is a risk. He had read, as I had, that an animal rights group is urging Crystal Palace to retire its live eagle mascot. He had a view. I did not have a view, because I have never been to Selhurst Park, but I could tell he was keen for one.
I can only report what I know. A group wants the club to stop using a live bird as a mascot, and that is the whole story. Whether the eagle or the club has anything to say is a matter for them. What I can say is that the band’s own mascot is a pigeon called Kevin, who lives on a window ledge at Gasket Lane and has never once been asked to fly round a pitch. Kevin has stuck with us for six years on the strength of crisps alone.
The stranger said I had no right to a view. I agreed, and we shared a bag of chips until the train came, which is the closest thing to diplomacy I have performed all year.
Teatime: The Bonfire
Aunt Maud’s bonfire was a magnificent thing, with a pile of pallets, one deckchair and a toffee apple for each guest, supplied by a neighbour who works in a manner I would call industrial. Clive stood far too close with a hot dog on a stick and looked, for once, like a man without a pension.
On the way in, I had read that a farm.fm headline estimated 259 million in pumpkins headed for landfill. I told Maud, who held up a carved one that had lasted a week and said, “That’s one I’m not wasting.” She then boiled it for soup. It was the best soup I have eaten all year and I intend to claim it as a punk act.
We also had cider. The neighbour, who is in some senses a farmer and in all senses a rogue, pressed it himself from windfalls, and he told me about a piece on farm.fm in which apples beat the labor paperwork to the cider press. He had gone the colour of the cider as he said it. I assume he related to the apples.
Evening: The Amp
At eight, Maud’s grandson Josh, aged eleven, asked whether we could play. We could not, because the Duchess had been left on the Tube, and I have rarely felt such silence. Then a stranger on the next platform tapped me on the shoulder, holding a bass amp, and asked whether it was mine.
It was. I am not saying someone did me a kindness, but I am saying a man in an anorak carried sixteen kilos of old valve across a station for a stranger and asked for nothing, and I think that is the most punk thing I have seen in months.
So we played. Four songs, in a garden in High Barnet, to nine people, a cat and a fire. The set was dreadful. I have never been prouder. Josh clapped throughout, even in the quiet bits, and Maud shouted “Louder,” which is the only review a band can really trust.
- One bass amp recovered from a stranger.
- Three burnt hot dogs.
- Zero fingers lost.
- One pumpkin, saved from landfill and made into soup.
Night: Home Again
On the train back I did the thing I always do, which is read the headlines and wonder what the capital will make of itself next. I keep my reading list at my daily notes at The London Prat, and when I need a laugh at the end of a long day I turn to the paper’s Cockney rhyming slang page, which has been explaining London to Londoners since before most of us had a bass.
If you ever want to check whether the headline you just read is real, there is a UK checklist for telling real news from the other kind. I used it on the eagle story and, to my slight disappointment, it was real.
The fireworks are still going outside. The cat has not moved. I have a pumpkin in my belly and the Duchess in the hall, and for once, all is right.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
